Chomsky talk... Brilliance encapsulated.

Noam Chomsky is an author and a huge critique of American politics. On reading his highly complex and difficult book Deterring Democracy, one can get various factual insights into the aftermath of the world war and the divine right for the U.S to act as a global sheriff. Our education is enshrouded with supposed truths of the avaricious Russia and its efforts to impose an evil Empire on its people.

“The great depression had put an end to any lingering beliefs that capitalism was a viable system. It was generally taken for granted that state intervention was necessary in order to maintain private power -- as, indeed, had been the case throughout the development process. It was also understood that New Deal measures had failed, and that the depression was overcome only by the far more massive state intervention during the war. Without the benefit of Keynes, this lesson was taught directly to the corporate managers who flocked to Washington to run the quasi-totalitarian wartime command economy. The general expectation was that without state intervention, there would be a return to the depression after pent-up consumer demand was satisfied. It appeared to be confirmed by the 1948 recession.”

From the late 1930s, business had been deeply perturbed by the increasing politicization and organization of the general public, what was later called a "crisis of democracy"

The argument that America propagated the Cold War by the bombing of its own ships thereby needing a reason to jump into the world war makes rational sense just like the sustenance of the Vietnam war to help military production corporations earn their pots of gold. (research on the ship bombed and how America came into war)

Chomsky writes;

…..As for the United States, its intervention in the Third World, particularly in the early years, was in part impelled by the goal of securing a hinterland for the state capitalist economies that the U.S. hoped to reconstruct in Western Europe and Japan. At the same time, the Cold War conflict helped to maintain U.S. influence over its industrial allies, and to contain independent politics, labor, and other popular activism within these states, an interest shared by local elites. The U.S. promoted the NATO alliance, one historian observes, "to corral its allies and to head off neutralism, as well as to deter the Russians."

These ‘local elites’ as Chomsky mentions are the global corporations and other bourgeois elitists with whom money vests, followed by power. Whereas the Soviets though had its allies it was more of a tenuous nature only intended to strike the U.S targets when needed. Inspections of American SLCM’s (Sea Launch Cruise Missiles) by the Soviets are denied, whereas the Soviet denial is met with scorn and a well orchestrated PR campaign and the instantaneous bombardment of controlled news channels and papers. It is funny how people can be manipulated under the illusion of ‘security concerns’ and the proliferation of vast amounts of warfare;

“The world is sufficiently uncertain and dangerous for alleged reasons of security to be readily devised to justify policies adopted on other grounds, then adopted as articles of faith, familiar features of statecraft and the practice of the intellectual community”

The argument of the desperation in Washington for proliferation of weapons can only be strengthened by the fact that it rejected a proposal by the Kremlin in 1952 for “reunification and neutralization of Germany, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly, and the free activity of democratic parties and organizations”. The U.S. did not inform the Senate or the common people about the proposal owing to a Mutual Security Act of 1952 which involved a $7.5 billion Western rearmament, and was "based upon the assumption that an All-German settlement could not possibly be achieved”. If the Kremlin proposal were to be accepted it would neutralize all the supposed threats the Soviets posed.

Chomsky writes “…It is likely that there would have been no Soviet tanks in East Berlin in 1953, no Berlin wall, no invasion of Hungary or Czechoslovakia -- but crucially, no ready justification for U.S. intervention and subversion worldwide, for state policies of economic management in the service of advanced industry, or for a system of world order in which U.S. hegemony was founded in large part on military might.”

Therefore it can be concluded that the Cold War had vested interests for both the super powers. For the USSR it was a war against its satellites and for America it was a war against Third World countries. On one side when the USSR interests have been relinquished it’s hard to argue that it is the same for the USA, simply because the US continues proliferation of weapons under the framework of ‘protecting the Third World countries.’

History is always written by the victors and when the soot is uncovered a very different picture begins to take shape. In a series of readings and interpretations along with research I intend to uncover Mr. Chomsky’s understanding of a rogue nation, America.

More will follow…. :-)